In late 1986, I bought my first home. It was in Speedway, Indiana, close to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Soon after moving in, I found out that most of my neighbors made a little extra money during the month of the Indy 500 by charging people to park on their lawns. There were also stories of kids setting up lemonade stands and charging race fans a fee to haul their coolers with their little red wagons.
After seeing flowers and teddy bears inside clear balloons at the mall, I got an idea for a toy to sell to race fans - a clear balloon with a little race car that would zoom around inside when you shook the balloon. After thinking about it for weeks, I decided to go for it. I built a machine in the basement to make the cars in quantity. I built 2 workstations to put the cars in the balloons and package them.
An importer in New York helped me get enough wheels from Hong Kong to make 100,000 cars. I drew a race car design and had a local print shop print and cut 100,000 little cards with the race car image - these would be folded and glued around the axles to make the car's body.
I drew a design for the side of the balloons - a swept numeral '500' with a checkered flag design. An Ohio company made 50,000 clear latex balloons for me with this design printed on two sides.
A local artist drew artwork for the packaging, and I had 100,000 packages printed by a local envelope company.
I spent hundreds of hours working on getting ready, and on making these toys - plus I hired a couple of high school kids to help make them.
The first time they were sold was in May of 1987, and during the 2 or 3 months before that, we produced over 50,000 of these toys. The first year, we sold between 10 and 15 thousand - not enough to pay for all the costs. The next year I concentrated on sales, and custom imprinted Zoom Balloons, and made a little money.
Here are some items that show the toy:
TV Spot: Channel 4 News, May 1987 (wmv 4.8 MB)
Zoom Balloon Patent (pdf 1.3 MB)
A letter I sent to Ad Specialty Companies (pdf 67 KB)